Slow Start Ruins Tarandowah Debut

Over its brief history, Tarandowah Golfers Club has managed to collect some interesting accolades. In 2008, it was nominated for Best New Course in Canada by ScoreGolf Magazine. In 2010, the publication heaped further praise on Tarandowah, including the London area course in its list of the Top 100 Golf Courses in Canada.

Intrigued by that kind of endorsement, I have been interested in playing the course for some time. The only thing holding me back was travelling the 170 km required to get there from downtown Toronto. I am willing to travel further than most for some good golf, but this was pushing the limit. Since my game went into a downward spiral this year, I decided I might as well suck it up and venture a little further. If my game wasn't going to improve, at least I would get to experience a new course.

The weather forecast was good and indeed I saw lots of sunshine while driving to and from the course. Then again, when you're in the car that long, I suppose you're bound to see periods of sunshine. While actually on the course, there seemed to be quite a bit of cloud cover, which put a bit of a damper on things. As one would expect on a faux links course, there was a significant amount of wind, but nothing ridiculous.

Overall, I have to say the course let me down a little bit. That may not be fair to the course designers or operators; perhaps my expectations were simply too high. The terrain is relatively flat, with little in the way of topographical interest. Swaths of fescue and little else separate many of the holes. Contrast this with a course like Eagle's Nest, which uses dramatic dunes as well as fescue to define many of its fairways. In terms of visual appeal, Tarandowah was just average. A course like Piper's Heath, also a faux links style, has much greater aesthetics. On a positive note, Tarandowah offers better value than either of those other courses, which in my opinion are ridiculously priced.

My game got off to a terrible start. My tee shot on hole #1 found a fairway bunker alongside hole #2. I struggled to get out, then messed up a pitch shot from 20 yards in front of the green. After a 3-putt, I chalked up a quadruple bogey. It wasn't much better on hole #2, where I registered a triple-bogey. My tee shot found the same bunker I was in earlier and I was forced to play it like a greenside bunker just to clear the high lip. Worse yet, I duffed a chip attempt near the green into another bunker.

I registered two more triples over the rest of the round, but added fourteen fairly well played holes. Most of these produced bogeys, while a couple of double-bogeys were offset by an equal number of pars. I drove the ball reasonably well and hit a lot of good iron shots. In both cases, I focused on keeping a short backswing. This helps me maintain a proper swing plane, which increases accuracy with no real loss of distance.

The bad start is what killed my score; otherwise, I was pretty pleased with my round. On a couple of occasions when mistakes happened, I compounded matters by following up with another mis-hit. On one hole, this came at the hand of some attempted strokes with the 5-wood. The fairway woods continue to be a problem. Over the front nine, the greens also had me fooled. The putting surfaces were faster than they appeared and I only got the speed correct on the back nine.

Score: 98
Putts: 36
Fairways: 4
Greens: 3
Penalties: 2